Be careful what you wish for.

It seems that a lot of folks tend to laud Paizo and damn Wizards of the Coast, some even going so far as to profess the hope that WOCT will fail. to those people who wish for WOTC's death, I say, take a look at the Pathfinder rulebooks and the Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks. WOTC prints their books in the United States. Paizo print Pathfinder in China. Now this isn't a xenophobic "Buy American" rant, and I'm not saying that one is any better than the other, but rather just that the impact of a company failing can go far beyond the company itself.

The Legend of Manchego!

Gary Sent us. No, seriously, he did.

It's hard to believe that Gary Gygax has been gone for a year. Sure, Gary Gygax has been gone for a year now, but the games that he created live on in one form or another. I know people who claim that Gary had long since become irrelevant, but I think that's crap. He was the driving force in the creation of a hobby that I continue to love 30 years after I first head about the game during an all night ice storm on a January Boy Scout camping trip. He was always gracious and quick to answer my silly discussion board questions, and he loved the hobby that he helped to create. If there is an afterlife, I hope that Gary's found a nice table in an out-of-the way corner with Don Kaye and Tom Moldvay to sling some dice. So go out there and roll some dice, talk in funny voices and pretend to be elves, dwarves, gnomes, or whatever you're in to. And don't forget, when you meet the goblins, tell them that Gary sent you. ;-)

The Rules vs. the Game

I've spent a lot of time lately looking over rule books trying to pick a game system to run, and it's finally stuck me that I've been going about it all wrong. I've been looking at rules and really not thinking about the game. The rules are NOT the game. The rules are a framework around which the game happens and spending too much time over-thinking the rules can kill the game.

Now I've never been much of a slave to the rules. In fact I don't much care for the rules. Oh sure, I buy a lot of rule books but in the end, the rules don't much interest me. I'm far more interested in the sense of atmosphere that a game creates with me. Of all of the games that I've ever played, the only one that I would truly say I "knew" was D&D way back in the day. I could barely remember the multiplication tables, but man did I know D&D. I had the combat tables committed to memory. I knew the saving throws for all the classes. I barely needed the books for anything except to provide inspiration, and they did that in spades. The artwork and the writing, while considered by many today to be substandard, still evokes a sense of wonder that I can't find in many other places.

Time passed and I played and ran other games. Gaming culture shifted and I found myself looking for rule-sets that would allow me to tell the types of stories that I wanted to tell. And that's where I fell off the boat. Role playing games are many things to many people. Lots of folks especially today really want to tell deep stories with interesting characters, and that's great for them. I used to want to do that too, and in fact I still want to but now I write fiction rather than try to turn my games into my fiction.

My idea of gaming isn't about a gamemaster telling his story, it's about a bunch of people finding out what the story is and having fun while they do it. The story may be deep and interesting, but it may just as easily be a story about creeping around an ancient ruins and looting the hell out of everything they find. They key is to get a group of people and have fun playing a game.

Games for Old-school Dungeon Crawling

I've put together a quick summary of three retro style games that I think work best for old fashioned dungeon crawling.  This is just designed to highlight their similarities/differences and is in no way intended to be a review or criticism of any of them.  I've placed them in alphabetical order so as not to indicate any preference by order.

Castles & Crusades

Overview:  A D20-light version of AD&D.  It follows a number of the current D20 conventions, while trying to stay rules-light.  There are no skill lists, just class skills.  Armor class is handled in the modern ascending format.  It is a race/class based system with all classes open to all races.  It's rules-light in today's terms, but is less a retro clone than a pared down version of D&D 3.5 with AD&D sensibilities.

My Assessment:  Probably the best choice for 3.5/4e players looking to scale back the complexity of their games while maintaining some familiar connection to the rules that they know.  A good game from a good company, but the most complex of the games discussed here. 

Labyrinth Lord  

Overview:  A retro clone of the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert D&D rules from 1981.  Race and class are not treated separately.  Dwarves, elves and halflings are their own class, with dwarves and halflings basically being fighters and elves being fighter magic users.

My Assessment:  A great choice for folks who cut their teeth on Moldvay and Cook and are after a classic dungeon crawl experience without a lot of overhead.  A nice complete package and free to boot.

Swords & Wizardry 

Overview:  This is for the most part a cleaned up, better organized version of OD&D (Original D&D).  It actually comes in two flavors, regular Swords & Wizardry and Swords & Wizardry White Box Edition.  The regular version includes that later stat bonuses for strength and dexterity and constitution , while the white box version retains the original idea that only charisma has any direct bonuses.  Demihumans are, in keeping with the OD&D rules, more limited in level progression than in Labyrinth Lord or Castles & Crusades.  

My Assessment:  Jump into the wayback machine and see how the grognards played D&D back in 1974-79.  Probably the best choice for people who want to house-rule their games a lot.  The rules found here adhere most closely to the old-school "guidelines" approach.  The Erol Otus style cover of the regular edition and that it's freely available are pluses too.

What makes a "good" dungeon?

I've been thinking about the question of what makes a good dungeon for a while now, so I think it's time to write down a brief summary of my ruminations.

1. A good map. The map is an important part of the dungeon. Thirty feet of passageway to room with orcs, followed by thirty feet of passageway to a room with kobolds, just doesn't cut it. Maps don't need to be Escher-like studies in insanity, but they do need to have enough caracter to make the players feel like they are going somewhere and not simply visiting the same room over and over again, or just following a straight path to the end of the dungeon.

2. A sense of scale. Dungeons in the old school sense were big places. Individual rooms might be small, but the overall impression should be that the dungeon is BIG.  The dungeon should cause players should feel that they are far from the lighted world above, especially as they moved deeper into the underworld. 

3. A sense of otherworldliness.  I 've always felt that the best dungeons are somehow separated from the day to day realities of the world above.  Sure, the dungeon may be situated beneath the ruins of a mad mage's castle, but it shouldn't be storerooms and privies.  The dungeon needs to be mysterious.  It should evoke wonder in the players and make them question its purpose.  That purpose may never be truly known, but it needs to engage the imaginations of the players.  Make your players wonder about things.  Keep their minds working.  The dungeon needs to almost be a character in itself and if handled well can in many ways be more interesting that either the monster or the loot found within it.

4. Room to grow.   A good dungeon needs room to grow.  Parties of adventurers will come and go and the dungeon may need to expand either downward of outward.  Make sure that there is room.

5. Care and feeding.  The best dungeons are never truly complete.  As adventurers come and go, things will change.  Old monsters will be slain, new monster will move in, inhabitants of the dungeon may form alliances or fight amongst themselves.  Dungeons are entities in a game and they need to be maintained.  A well cared for dungeon can provide countless adventurers for numerous parties.  

Some more thoughts on hirelings and henchmen

I'm quite sure that of those who even remember the prevalence of hirelings and henchman in the early days of RPGs, quite a number of them don't really miss them.  I've heard comments from people to the effect of "hirelings don't make for a heroic story", or "Conan didn't hire a torchbearer."  While I can see these points, I would argue that especially at low levels, the PCs are not mighty heroes of literature, they are adventurers, adventurers on a journey often into the uncharted depths of the earth.  To me, hirelings and henchmen accentuate the send of an expedition.  I think back to the days of watching the old Tarzan movies, where the explorers surrounded themselves with no end of bearers, guides and other assorted local-help, not to mention hiring Tarzan to save them when things got really tough.

In games terms there is sometimes some confusion between hirelings and henchmen (sometimes called retainers).  This was in my opinion caused by the somewhat inconsistent terminology used in the early days, but for the most part, the confusion was cleared up by the first edition AD&D Players Handbook.

Hirelings are individuals such as Bearers, crossbowmen, men-at-arms, teamsters, etc.  They are employed by the PCs for a set fee.  They generally are employed for a set period of time and do not usually gain experience.  In the case of crossbowmen or men-at-arms, they will fight with the party as that's what they are payed to do, but the other non-combat hirelings will generally only fight when it is necessary for their own survival.  The PC's charism, while affecting the loyalty and morale of Hirelings, does not restrict the number of hirelings a PC may have.

Henchmen are a different story.  Henchmen are considered to be followers of the PC.  They travel with the PC for lodging, supports and a share of the adventuring spoils.  They also gain experience, albeit at a slower rate than the PCs, gaining only 50% of earned experience.  This is because they are not involved in the decision making process of and adventure and while controlled by the gamemaster, they generally follow the orders of the PCs, except of course in situations where the orders are not of an agregious nature.   Charisma is an important factor with henchmen, as it limits the number that a PC may have as well as affecting their loyalty.  Thus, when using hirelings and henchmen, charisma becomes a more important stat in the game and not the dump stat that it has become in later days.

Henchmen provide not only addition muscle and skill son an adventure, they can also provide a source of replacement characters.  Dungeons in the old days were deadly places, and having a henchmen along when your PC fails a save vs. poison can be a godsend.  this becomes even more important later in a campaign.  Imagine if you will, a party of 4th level character wandering deep beneath the earth, when disaster strikes.  Suppose that one of the PCs is slain, perhaps in a manner that precludes his or her being raised from the dead such as a pool of lava or acid (no body, no raise dead).  So, what is the player to do?  Go home?  Roll up a brand new first level character?  Well, if there was a henchman around, the day would be saved.   He would most likely be only second level and while that might not be ideal, that character would still be more survivable than a level 1.  

Of course hirelings and henchmen do require a bit more record keeping on the part of the GM, but I think that the benefits that they can bring to a game are numerous.  From rounding out a weak party to providing a source of easy and logical PC replacements it's hard to argue their potential value.  So, I say, "Bring on the hirelings and henchmen!"   

Dungeon Entrances

One of the biggest problems that I have when designing a dungeon is coming up with the main entrance. I've been doing quite a lot of thinking lately about what constitutes a "good" entrance. Should the entrance be a room, or just a stairway descending into a corridor? I think than an argument can be made for either choice. I usually tend toward using an entrance room, so I'll approach that first.

As this is the first room that and adventuring party sees, it can go a long way toward setting the tone for the dungeon. I like my entrances to be interesting, but as this room is often the most frequent through-way for adventurers going in to plunder the depths and monsters sneaking out to raid the countryside, it's unlikely to be filled with interesting items, traps or tricks. By the same token if the room is a 30'x30 square with nothing in it but doors or archways and a dusty floor, it serves as a rather drab opening for the "mystical underworld".

So, perhaps it is best that the entrance leads to a corridor, allowing the players an initial choice and some variability around which room the party encounters first. With this approach, different parties can find different first rooms. Of course this does little to help capture the players imagination initially. "Ooooh a 10' wide corridor! How novel."

In the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide, Gary Gygax presents a small selection of dungeon entrances to be used with the random dungeon generation tables in the appendix. While these are useful, I've never found them to be particularly inspiring, and I'm a strong believer that maps should be inspiring. I think that a GM should look at a map and think, "now that's a cool looking dungeon!" But this is heading toward a discussion of how important are cool maps to cool dungeons, with is a topic for another time.

A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming

How we gamed in Ye Olde Tymes.
And Best of all, it's free.

http://www.lulu.com/content/3019374

Resurrecting "Old School"

The Traditional Adventure Roleplaying Association announces International Traditional Adventure Roleplaying Week, January 10th through 17th, 2009

http://traditionalgaming.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/hello-world/

Party like it's 1979!

In which we creep closer to my finally choosing a system

I'm in the mood to run an old school dungeon crawl. The type centered around a village on the edge of a dark forest, with a nasty beast infested swap nearby. No far away, just out of site of the village in fact, is the hill upon which the ruins of the once mighty fortress of the mad Arch-mage Cyclopentaxor. The upper works of the fortress have long ago been laid low, but it is rumored that a nearly endless warren of tunnels and crypts lies below the ruins.

I've reduced my preferred system list to the following:

1. Labyrinth Lord (Basic & Expert D&D clone. Nicely Done and available for free. Mutant Future is a plus here as well.)

2. Swords & Wizardry (Re-imaging of the original 3 brown D&D books. It's free too.)

3. Castles & Crusades (I finally figured out what I don't like about C&C. The book covers. Thankfully the covers are being redone in 2009.)

4. Actual Original 3 little brown book Dungeons & Dragons

5. Savage Worlds (A nice versatile game, but not necessarily the best choice for dungeon crawling.)

Of course, now I need to pick one. Any suggestions?

Gaming resolutions for the new year

Of course I never keep these sorts of things, but what the heck.

I resolve to play more tabletop games and less computer games.  I have no intention of curing my computer game addiction, just toning it down a bit.  One hour a day working on my grand megadungeon, or painting miniatures, or playing a boardgame with my wife and/or friends seems to be a somewhat better way to spend an evening than 3 hours in front of a PC game.

I resolve to choose a preferred system and actually learn its' rules.  My current list of possible candidates (in no particular order) is as follows:

1. Castles & Crusades

2. Labyrinth Lord

3. Swords & Wizardry

4. Savage Worlds

5. Dragon Warriors

Retro Redux (Dragon Warriors)

Dragon Warriors is quite possibly what D&D would have been had D&D been created in England.  Thanks to Magnum opus and Mongoose Publishing it's back in print after a long hiatus. 

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1609#

The new edition is a very nice book with a great retro feel.  The classes are similar to those of D&D with a few cool twists.  The rules are simple and easy to understand and best of all, it's a good system for running dungeons!

I think I may need to add this one to my "List of Acceptable RPGs".

Going native...er...retro

I have reached the threshold of middle-age and still consider myself a gamer. If you would have asked my at 14 if I thought that I would still be playing RPGs at 39, I would most certainly have said "yes" quite emphatically. Of course when I was 14 I'm sure that I believed a lot of things that would turn out to be untrue. Not so with gaming, and not only am i still gaming, but I have come full circle. I started with basic D&D, progressed to advanced D&D, moved on to the Hero System in college, played a dozen other "modern" RPGs and now, here I am, wishing for the old days of basic D&D. I purchased copies of both the Holmes and Moldvay editions from ebay, complete with boxes and dice. I own PDFs of Gygax and Arneson's original D&D rules. I frequent the Dragonsfoot boards and the Knights and Knaves Alehouse. I have a hardcover copy of Labyrinth Lord for heaven's sake. It's safe to say that I am into Retro RPGs.

So, perhaps I should outline why I really enjoy "old school" gaming. This is not to say that I don't enjoy modern games or that older games are in any way superior. It's just me thoughts.

1. Quick and easy to learn, yet easily expandable.

Games like Basic D&D, Labyrinth Lord, Swords and Wizardry and Basic Fantasy Roleplaying can be learned by the players in just s few minutes and by the GM in just a few hours, yet they are easily modfiable in many ways. Want critical hit carts? Grab your old ones from Rolemaster. New races can be borrowed from anywhere, especially versions of D&D. These games expect and really encourage the players to make them their own.

2. Quick character creation. Roll stats, pick a class, roll hit points, buy equipment and go. These types of games are great for when you want to just sit down and play and don't want your first session to be dedicated to just making characters. This also comes in handy when characters die. Yes, I said die. We'll talk more about death later on but for now suffice it to says that when a character in one of these games dies, there is no need for the character to be out of the action for a long time. Just follow the steps above and voila! Grob the Dwarf part II.

3. Character die. They die and the do it a lot. I'm sure that you are thinking, "ooooh, GM with an attitude here." No, not really. The threat of death was something in old RPGs that I found very exciting, even as a player. I never wanted my character to die, but I was an adventurer by the gods! I needed to do dangerous things and there was nothing like saving vs a deadly poison, or trying to avoid the basilisk's petrifying gaze, to get the blood flowing. It conveyed a sense that was we were doing was inherently dangerous in the world that our characters occupied. The rule of these old games usually made certain to stress that there were no winners of losers in RPG. Among the players that is true. Among the characters it is another story. No, no matter how generous would say that Grob the Dwarf had "won" when he got swallowed by the purple worm and subsequently was digested in its foul gullet. Grob had lost. He has lost his very existence, barring resurrection or wishes, which tended to be rather rare in older games. Grob's player had lost a character, but he didn't lose the game. He could quickly roll up Grob II or Grob's younger brother Grib, the party would run into him around the next corner and off they would go. Even better, Grob's player could take one of Grob's reatiners as his new PC and never miss a beat, except for perhaps the time taken to divy up Grobs loot. Waste not...

These are just a few thoughts that I've been having. There are more, but it is late, so perhaps I will continue this another day.

The Tao of RPGs

"Have little and be fulfilled. Have much and be confused."

I've always been fond of these words from the Tao Te Ching. They have always seemed very applicable to my daily life and even more so to my RPG life. Way back in the mists of time (the late 70s early 80s) , we gamed a lot. We played at Boy Scout meetings, on camping trips, in study halls and around my parent's dining room table on Friday nights. I was almost always the GM (or Dungeon Master back then) and we almost always played Dungeons & Dragons. Sure, even back in those days there were other games available, but we were somewhat geographically isolated and didn't have ready access to much beyond D&D. We tried other games like Rolemaster (too many charts), Top Secret (fun, but better for one-shots than a long term game), and Powers & Perils (utterly incomprehensible), but D&D was our standby. I could run a game at a moment's notice. All that was required for hours of fun was some graph paper and a handful of dice.

Fast-forward to today. I've found myself almost completely unable to run a game lately. What is the problem? Not enough time? Sure, my time is more limited than it was back in Ye Olde Days, but I have plenty of time to screw around playing World of Warcraft or staring at the walls, so that's not it. No players? Nope that's not it either, I have players. No, it's not what I don't have but rather what I DO have. To many games. Yes, the dream that I have as a kid of having tons of games to play has finally come true and it is a nightmare. I seem to have developed some bizarre form of gaming ADD which leaves my unable to decide on a game system to use. I just can't pick one!

Now I have made some small efforts to overcome this malady, but the results have been mixed. A week or so ago, I went through what I can only call "The Library" and tried to come up with a list of games that I would run and why I would run them. So here I what I've com up with:

Savage Worlds: This is a solid choice. Lots of flexibility and the ability to do multiple genres. Probably not the best choice fo dungeon crawls, but a good all around game for GMs with limited time.
http://www.peginc.com/

Castles & Crusades: Hail to the Ye Olde Tymes! Not a bad system and I really like the company (Troll Lord Games). I have run this before and enjoyed it, but something about it keeps holding me back.
http://www.trolllord.com

Labyrinth Lord: Now these are Ye Olde Tymes. A direct update of Moldvay & Cook which I've always had a soft spot for. Into the dungeons and pass the pizza! It's also available as a free PDF, but to quote my wife, "...and yet you found a way to pay for it."
http://www.goblinoidgames.com/labyrinthlord.htm

Swords & Wizardry: An OD&D (the three little brown books) clone. Kickin' it way Olde School. Great for cold nights in Wisconsin (or Pennsylvania). A cool retro homage to Erol Otus cover too. It's available as a free PDF just like LL and just like LL, I found a way to pay for it.
http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: A wonderfully atmospheric game if you're into death in the dark ages. Lots of source materials, but tied to a particular world (albeit a very cool world IMHO), and I prefer to roll my own. Overall a nice game with a lot to recommend it, including the Rat Catcher. It does however remain slightly unclear how much support this game will get now that Fantasy Flight Games owns the license.
http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/

So there we have it, my "List of Acceptable RPGS" (as of today). Two small press games, two free games and one big company offering.

Now I like dungeons. I love them in fact. I love the idea of the megadungeon where the dungeon as the campaign. I love killing time and goblins while killing a case of beer and a pizza. I love springing death traps on my players and watching them cleverly avoid them. Of these games, Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord are probably the most directly geared toward that sort of thing. Castles & Crusades leans toward the dungeon, while Savage Worlds and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay lean a bit away. Of course dungeons are a matter of taste, and game style needs to be agreed upon by at least a majority of players and in turn certain game styles fit better with certain systems.

By now, anyone unlucky enough to have read this is probably asking "Is there a point to all of this?" The short answer would be, "No." It's really nothing more than an effort to set down my ideas about what games I like and to push me to at least pick a game to run if I feel so inclined.

So am I any closer to picking a system and running a game? No, not really, but at least I have achieved a bit of perspective on what is holding my back and I have a starting list of games to work with.